Monitoring devices have long been employed to determine the vitality of a network. In a business environment, monitoring devices have been engaged by enterprises to ensure reliable performance, enable fault detection, and detect unauthorized activities. For monitoring devices, test access ports or taps may create a monitoring access port between two network devices, such as switches, routers, and more. Accordingly, different types of taps may be available, including but are not limited to, copper tap (10/100/1000), Fiber tap (e.g., 1 gigabyte 10 gigabyte), and port aggregator.
To facilitate discussion, FIG. 1A shows a simple block diagram of a fiber optic tap. A fiber optic tap may be employed for monitoring network traffic on a fiber optic network system. A fiber optic tap 102 may include at least two network ports, network ports 104 and 106, each of which may include an input port (a receiver (RX) port) and an output port (transceiver (TX) port). To monitor the network traffic at least a monitor port 108 may be available. In an example, network traffic flowing through the network ports is copied and routed to a monitor device via monitor port 108.
Unfortunately, a typical fiber optic tap does not have any visual indicator or control interface to check whether fiber optic tap 102 has sufficient signal strength on the network ports to ensure error free network traffic flow. Signal strength may be affected for various reasons including, but are not limited to, wrong type of cable, cable length is too long, mismatch between the transmitter laser wavelength and the fiber optic splitter in the fiber optic tap, connector defects, and the like.
Those skilled in the arts are aware that the fluidity of network traffic through a network device, such as a fiber optic tap, may be determined based on the signal strength received by the network device. In other words, if the signal strength is high at a port, the port is most likely receiving the network traffic. However, if the signal strength is low at a port, the port may be experiencing inconsistent data transfer or even data loss.
To facilitate discussion, FIG. 1B shows a flow diagram of a signal through fiber optic tap 102 with two network ports (104 and 106) and monitoring port 108. Consider the situation wherein, for example, transmitters are connected to fiber optic tap 102 via a set of fiber optic line. Each network port may be connected to a transmitter via a fiber optic line. In an example, a first fiber optic line is connected to an input port (RX) of network port 104 and a second fiber optic line is connected to an input port (RX) of network port 106. A first optical signal coming from the first fiber optic line may be received by a connector 152 at network port 104. The first optical signal mats flow along a path 154 to a splitter 156, which may be configured to split the first optical signal and forward the first optical signal along paths 158 and 160 to an output (TX) port of network port 106 via a connector 162 and an output (TX) port of monitor port 108 via a connector 164, respectively. Similarly, a second optical signal coming from the second fiber optic line may be received by connector 162 at network port 106. The second optical signal may flow along a path 166 to a splitter 168, which may be configured to split the second optical signal and forward the second signal along paths 170 and 172 to an output (TX) port of network port 104 via connector 152 and an output (TX) port of monitor port 108 via connector 164, respectively.
Without visual confirmation, the strength of the optical signals being received by each connector (e.g., connector 152, connector 162, and connector 164) is unknown. In an example, a user, such as an information technology (IT) personnel, is unable to quickly determine the status of the optical signals without logging onto the network system and bringing up the tap log, for example. More importantly, without visual confirmation, the IT personnel is unable to determine the signal strength in order to determine insertion loss, which is the difference between the signal strength being transmitted by the transmitter SFP (small form-factor pluggable) and the signal strength being received by the receiver SFP.